Here is one reason to get up early when you visit Santa Fe. The wooden posts on the sides of many buildings form nice diagonals as the sun rises. As the sun rises, the diagonals get shorter and shorter, and move further and further towards straight up and down. I passed by this location about an hour after I took this image and the diagonals were essentially gone.

I found this set of diagonals at the intersection of Olde Santa Fe Trail and East Water streets. Because I was there so early, there was very little traffic on the streets. I was able to set my tripod in the middle of the intersection and take several images before a car drove up.

After stopping at the Salinas Pueblo Mission National Monument in Mountainair NM, you drive to the three pueblo sites. Because of time and where I was headed (Santa Fe) I only had time to visit two of the three sites (I skipped Abo). This is the Quarai site.

I found it interesting that the Quarai site was made of red rock material, while the Gran Quivira site was gray stone. I guess they used what was available, and geology provided for different colored material at the two site.

After stopping at the Salinas Pueblo Mission National Monument in Mountainair NM, you drive to the three pueblo sites. Because of time and where I was headed (Santa Fe) I only had time to visit two of the three sites. This is a detail image from the Gran Quivira site.

This image shows a series of stone walls taken from the east side of what the park brochure calls the later church. I composed this image from a low angle so that the five walls overlapped each other to form what, at first glance, looks to be a single wall.

On this day I had the usual clear blue skies common throughout my New Mexico road trip. As a result, I did not bother shooting above the horizon. Being grayish, the color of the stones did not really add to the composition. I used Silver Efex Pro from the Google Nik Collection (free!) to convert the image to black and white. Converting the image to black and white places the emphasis on the repeating patterns formed by the rocks and the walls.